Three of the four UCLA faculty members elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences are affiliated with the UCLA International Institute: Ivan T. Berend and Michael Mann, with the Center for European and Eurasian Studies; and Gregory Schopen, with the Center for Buddhist Studies.

In a recent talk at the Center for European and Eurasian Studies, Charles King offered a bottom-up view of the birth of modern Istanbul, a city where people displaced by tectonic change remade themselves anew in the decades following World War I.